Child Focus Research Articles

Reinscribing (Asian) American History in Laurence Yep's Dragonwings

Reinscribing (Asian) American History in Laurence Yep’s Dragonwings Rocío G. Davis (bio) Abstract Creatively (re)interpreting history is essential to the Asian American process of validation and self-representation. Historical novels by Asian American writers introduce messages of empowerment for children while paralleling the operation of their own culture within American history. This essay examines Laurence Yep’s Dragonwings (1975) as emblematic of the strategies Asian American writers use to engage stories of Asians in the United States As Asian Americans write stories about their history they illuminate an often concealed past; through these stories they are doing justice to Asian American history and the overarching American history. Literature functions as an effective way for children to learn about diversity within and among cultures and to gain a sense of their country's ethnic history and constitution. The growing field of children's literature focusing on ethnicity and culture presents issues of heritage as they intersect with contemporary life and myth adapted to Western circumstances. Many of the themes that are dealt with in adult literature—such as identity, the meaning of home, interpersonal relationships—appear in children's literature with a didactic purpose. This area has become a "particularly intense site of ideological and political contest, for various groups of adults struggle over which versions of ethnic identity will become institutionalized in school, home, and library settings" (K. C. Smith 3). Focusing specifically on Asian American children's literature and tracing its evolution since the 1970s, one comprehends the way that literature functions as a cultural product that both reflects and shapes the cultures of those who live it—and the way that "consumers," or beneficiaries, can play a role in the production of culture and its literary artifacts (Carpenter 53). Asian American writers for children are deploying increasingly creative strategies for negotiating the varied strands of culture that children experience. Their creations—including historical fiction, picture books, autobiographies, novels, poetry, and bilingual texts—strive to balance appreciation for heritage with attention to the renewed cultural realities their audiences may be experiencing. Children's texts are culturally formative and of tremendous importance educationally, intellectually, and socially. Perhaps more than other forms of literature, they reflect society as it wishes to be, as it wishes to be seen, and as it unconsciously reveals itself to be. Consequently, ethnic children's literature highlights the meaning or values that society places on questions and attitudes about ethnic differences and intercultural [End Page 390] relationships. It reflects how each group occupies or moves within certain areas or exerts specific influence on the place they are in and the community they form. Rudine Sims classifies this category of children's writing as "culturally conscious books" (478)—that is, stories told from the point of view of the ethnic character, and dealing with a concrete ethnic family or neighborhood, focusing on both heritage and contemporary living. The themes generally dealt with include those common in all realistic children's fiction: everyday experiences, urban living, friendships, family relationships, and stories about growing up (480-81). Furthermore, as Ivy Chan argues, in developing multicultural literature for children, one of the goals must be to foster in the child a multicultural perspective—an international outlook and the realization that people express many of the same feelings and needs in varied ways; the emphasis should be on what people share—the "similarity in differences"—rather than what separates (23). The evolution is toward writing that resonates with the realities of actual childhood situations, specifically intercultural works that emphasize the varied cultural influences a child growing up in the United States experiences, rather than on solely appreciating and/or acquiring a heritage identity. As Katharine Capshaw Smith explains, "Children's literature allows readers a means to reconceptualize their relationship to ethnic and national identities. Telling stories to a young audience becomes a conduit for social and political revolution" (3). In contemporary American society, ethnic literature for children tends to highlight ways of affirming and celebrating difference as they simultaneously seek ways to cooperate and collaborate across ethnic boundaries. For the children of minority groups in the United States today, the issue of how to integrate the past with...

The behaviors of parents of children with autism predict the subsequent development of their children's communication.

The present study focused on behaviors that caregivers of children with autism show during play interactions, particularly the extent to which the caregiver's behavior is synchronized with the child's focus of attention and ongoing activity. The study had two major findings. First, caregivers of children with autism synchronized their behaviors to their children's attention and activities as much as did caregivers of children with developmental delay and caregivers of typically developing children, matched on language capacities. Second, caregivers of children with autism who showed higher levels of synchronization during initial play interactions had children who developed superior joint attention and language over a period of 1, 10, and 16 years than did children of caregivers who showed lower levels of synchronization initially. These findings suggest a developmental link between parental sensitivity and the child's subsequent development of communication skills in children with autism. Implications for parent training interventions are discussed.

Principles and practical grouping for the use of drill and practice programs

Abstract A previous paper showed that young children performed better when working as individuals rather than in pairs on a drill and practice program. This paper reports an analysis of behaviour and talk for individuals and single sex pairs using a computer‐based drill and practice activity to explain differences in performance. Results indicated that individuals were more likely to be task‐focused and to complete tasks successfully than children working in pairs. Differences were found in off‐task activity, behaviours and type of talk. Grouping and verbal interaction are discussed in relation to the type of task/program that children are asked to undertake, and how both task and peer presence may constrain the child's task focus and performance when reinforcing pre‐existing knowledge.

It's All a Matter of Timing: Sign Visibility and Sign Reference in Deaf and Hearing Mothers of 18-Month-Old Children.

The signed and spoken language produced by 14 mothers to their 18-month-old children during free play was analyzed. All the children had profound prelingual deafness. Seven of the mothers were profoundly deaf and fluent users of British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan. The other seven were hearing and had enrolled in a signing program. Maternal signed utterances were classified according to whether they were made in the child's line of sight and whether they had a salient context; that is, they referred to an object or event at the child's current focus of attention. Spoken utterances were coded by word length. Comparisons between the two groups showed that both deaf and hearing mothers produced a majority of single-sign utterances (rather than utterances containing two or more signs). Deaf mothers also produced a majority of single-word spoken utterances, whereas the hearing mothers produced a significantly greater proportion of multiword utterances. As predicted, deaf mothers were more successful than hearing mothers in presenting signed utterances with a salient context that were visible to their children. Across the group as a whole, the total number of visible and salient signed utterances produced in 10 minutes was positively correlated with the total number of occasions on which mothers successfully redirected their child's attention or the child spontaneously turned to look at the mother. This suggests that deaf children who are visually attentive to their mothers receive a greater number of visible signed utterances with a salient context. I argue that this provides a more secure context for early language development.

READING CHILDREN'S BOOKS IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DISSENTING FAMILIES

The eighteenth-century commodifications of childhood and the sciences overlapped in the production of science books for children. This article examines a children's book written by two members of the Unitarian circle around Warrington Academy in the 1790s, and contrasts it with a Church of England work. The analysis reveals the extent to which religious differences could affect parental attitudes to the natural world, reason, the uses of the sciences, and the appropriate way to read and discuss books. Although the sciences were admitted as suitable for children, the issues of the subjects to be chosen, the purposes they were intended for, and the pedagogical methods by which they were presented, were still contested. This article also goes beyond the usual studies of children's books by focusing on non-fiction, and by emphasizing readers and use, rather than authors or publishers. Yet producing a history of reading based entirely on actual readers will be exceedingly difficult, so this article suggests an alternative, by combining accounts of actual readers' experiences with attitudes towards practices like orality and discussion.

Deaf children's encounters with written texts: contrasts between hearing teachers and deaf adults in supporting reading

The issue of deaf children's difficulties in acquiring literacy is reframed as a problem faced by most hearing teachers in knowing how best to construct conversational interactions around text. Adults vary markedly in their ability to engage with children reading. Comparisons are made between hearing teachers from different school settings and deaf adults in their strategies for sustaining deaf children's active remakings of text. It is concluded that hearing teachers build discourse frames which are high in management and control, whilst literate deaf adults are more responsive to the child's attention focus, gestures and communicative intentions. The study yields information on the nature of the language input as children read with contrasting partners and how the quality of interaction impacts on children's meaning-making.

Deaf children's encounters with written texts: contrasts between hearing teachers and deaf adults in supporting reading

AbstractThe issue of deaf children's difficulties in acquiring literacy is reframed as a problem faced by most hearing teachers in knowing how best to construct conversational interactions around text. Adults vary markedly in their ability to engage with children reading. Comparisons are made between hearing teachers from different school settings and deaf adults in their strategies for sustaining deaf children's active remakings of text. It is concluded that hearing teachers build discourse frames which are high in management and control, whilst literate deaf adults are more responsive to the child's attention focus, gestures and communicative intentions. The study yields information on the nature of the language input as children read with contrasting partners and how the quality of interaction impacts on children's meaning-making.

The Role of Essentialism in Children's Concepts

Publisher Summary This chapter emphasizes “essentialism” as a folk psychological understanding and distinguishes between essentialism as a philosophical position and essentialism as a folk belief. The former addresses the nature of reality; the latter addresses the nature of people's ordinary belief systems. The question that frames this research is where essentializing comes from and how deeply engrained is it in language and conceptual systems. At this point the possible roots of an essentialist assumption have been much disputed. Essentialism could be the by-product of Western philosophy or cultural traditions. It is argued that people are deep-down essentialists even without the benefit of science. The study of adults in this culture cannot provide evidence on the issue, because with adults the effects of schooling and scientific training cannot be teased apart. Children, however, provide an excellent test case, because they have had little exposure to or knowledge of either Western philosophy or scientific theories. Children also enable a strong test of the centrality of essence-like constructs, given children's well-documented focus on object appearances.

Following the child's lead: mothers' interactions with children with autism.

This study examined the extent to which mothers of preschool children with autism use language that is related to the child's focus of attention. Fourteen mother-child dyads involving preschool children with autism participated in this study, along with 14 matched dyads involving typically developing preschool children. Both groups were observed during 15 minutes of free play. Results revealed that the mothers of children with autism directed verbalizations to something within the child's focus of attention as frequently as the mothers of typically developing children. Thus, children with autism had as many opportunities to benefit from verbal input related to their focus of attention as did typically developing children. However, mothers of children with autism directed verbalizations to something not within the child's focus of attention more frequently than mothers of typically developing children. This nonrelated input may have reflected the mothers' attempts to adapt to their children's difficulties in attention and interaction.

Attention, coping, and activity in children undergoing orthopaedic surgery.

The purpose of this study was to determine how children's preoperative focus of attention on the stresses of surgery related to their preoperative coping and return to usual activities during recovery. Children's attention was classified according to three different foci: concrete-objective, emotion, and vague. Children (N = 97) between the ages of 8 and 17 years who were undergoing major orthopaedic surgery participated in the study. Data were collected the day before surgery, and at 3, 6, and 9 months postoperatively. Children who focused on the concrete-objective aspects of surgery had the most positive activity outcomes, followed by the emotion-focused attention group. Children who were classified as having vague focused attentions had the least favorable activity outcomes. When there were significant coping by attention interaction effects, vigilant copers who had a concrete-objective focus of attention had the most favorable activity outcomes at each time of measurement. Children who were able to focus their attention on concrete aspects of the experience tended to use vigilant coping and were able to return to their usual activities sooner.

Through the Eyes of Children: Youths' Perceptions and Evaluations of Maternal and Paternal Roles

Although scholars have called for greater inclusion of children's understandings in sociological research, most studies of family roles and relationships are still adult-centered. In this paper we explore children's perceptions and evaluations of maternal and paternal roles by content-analyzing more than 3,000 essays in which children explain why their parent is the best mother or father. The parental qualities and activities children value and how children frame familial relationships document the salience of gender and gender processes in families. These patterns generally complement and expand upon patterns found in studies on parenthood conducted from adults' perspective. Yet some important differences exist as well, such as the relative unimportance of labor force participation in children's appraisals of their fathers and children's greater focus on mutuality when describing relations with their fathers. To assess the degree to which children Is perceptions have changed, we also compare essays from 1979-1980 with those from the early 1990s and find a clear shift in emphasis from a caretaker/provider role to a more recreational role: this shift, on closer inspection, is more applicable to fathers than to mothers. These findings underscore the need of family, gender, and social psychological research to incorporate children's perspectives.

What Mothers Do to Support Infant Visual Attention: Sensitivities to Age and Hearing Status

This article presents a descriptive, longitudinal study of maternal use of communicative strategies to accommodate and direct infant visual attention. The two questions that guided our research were whether maternal use of particular attention-related strategies changed as the child developed from 9 to 18 months of age and whether the mother's ability to make appropriate modifications in strategy use was disrupted when she was using a new mode of communication. Four groups of mother-infant dyads were included: deaf mothers with deaf children (Dd), hearing mothers with deaf children (Hd), deaf mothers with hearing children (Dh), and hearing mothers with hearing children (Hh) (n = 77). When the infants were 9, 12, and 18 months old, they were videotaped while they engaged in free play with their mothers. Using a time-sampling technique, videotapes were coded to determine the frequency with which mothers used specific attention-related strategies. Our findings showed group differences in the attention-related strategies used by deaf and hearing mothers. These group differences were consistent with the hypothesis that while mothers appeared to be sensitive to and tried to accommodate their children's communication needs, the mothers may have been limited by their own communicative experiences. With regard to changes in mothers' use of attention-related strategies over time, our hypothesis of a developmental transition in the chosen strategies was only partially supported. Attention strategies related to language did evidence a pattern of developmental progression; however, maternal use of strategies that directed the children's visual focus to an object or a social partner did not show any such trend. Overall, the patterns indicated in the data from this study suggest that bidirectional influences were operating to some degree in each of the four groups. Among mothers whose hearing status differs from their children, the use of certain attention-related strategies might need to be taught, particularly the use of specific strategies that may scaffold deaf infants' developing abilities to alternate attention between objects and persons.

Predicting cognitive-language and social growth curves from early maternal behaviors in children at varying degrees of biological risk.

Growth modeling was used to examine the relation of early parenting behaviors (averaged across 6 and 12 months) with rates of change in children's cognitive-language and social response and initiating skills assessed at 6, 12, 24, and 40 months. Groups of full-term (n = 112) and very low birth weight children, divided into medically low (n = 114) and high risk (HR; n = 73), were included to evaluate whether children who vary in their rate of development are influenced in different ways by early parenting styles. Parenting behaviors that were sensitive to children's focus of interest and did not highly control or restrict their behaviors predicted greater increases and faster rates of cognitive-language and social development, with relations stronger for the HR versus the other two groups. These maternal behaviors may provide the support all infants need to establish an optimal early foundation for later development and the specific support HR children need to learn in spite of early attentional and organizational problems.

A Children's Focus Group Discussion in a Public Library:

No abstract available for this article.

A Children's Focus Group Discussion in a Public Library:

A Children's Focus Group Discussion in a Public Library:

The Effects of Focused Stimulation for Promoting Vocabulary in Young Children with Delays

The interactive model of language intervention optimizes parent-child interaction patterns by training parents to increase their responsiveness to the child's focus and interests, and provide language models appropriate to the child's level and plan-of-the-moment. We explored the effects of a focused stimulation version of this intervention approach, in which parents used interactive intervention techniques, but targeted specific vocabulary. In this pilot study, 16 mothers and their preschool-aged children with language delays were randomly assigned to treatment and delayed-treatment (control)groups. Vocabulary targets were individually selected for each child based on the child's phonetic repertoire and parent report of vocabulary development. In accord with program objectives, children in the treatment group used more target words and acquired more symbolic play gestures than children in the control group. No significant differences were found between the two groups at posttest for control words, or for a general measure of vocabulary development. Finally, mothers of children in the experimental group reported a reduction in aggressive/destructive behaviors in their children after intervention.

Chronic Invasive Monitoring for Identifying Seizure Foci in Children

In both children and adults, it has been well established that the precise localization of a seizure focus allows for the best possible resection and outcome. Long-term invasive monitoring with DE has been the most widely used modality to evaluate patients with intractable seizures of temporal lobe origin. The study of epilepsy in children, however, requires assessment of the cause of the seizures with a resultant decision regarding the optimal modality of study for the particular problem. Complex partial seizures of medial temporal lobe origin without clear concordance or lateralizing information are best studied using DE. With MR imaging anatomic localization, stereotactic insertion of DE can be performed accurately and relatively safely. The information obtained permits lateralization and focus localization if the lesion is within the medial structures. The ability of DE to study epilepsy outside of the medial temporal lobe, however, is suboptimal. Many centers have used surface electrodes to map temporal lobe foci successfully. SE and SGE have not been widely used in children. Subdural electrode arrays, however, are superior to DE in extratemporal epilepsy because the cortical surface contacts provide the best recordings of epileptiform activity from a wide range of extratemporal regions. The limitations of intraoperative ECoG in the awake child are well understood. It is rare that a child can undergo surgery under local anesthesia and cooperate to the extent necessary for definitive mapping of the seizure focus and eloquent areas. Thus, invasive long-term monitoring would seem ideal in the epileptic pediatric patient because it allows for a more relaxed pace in which to record events, and because of the indwelling nature of these electrodes, it is possible for the investigator to map eloquent areas of the brain before resection. This type of evaluation completely and accurately maps interictal and ictal activity, and through cortical stimulation or mapping of somatosensory areas by evoked potentials, eloquent areas of the brain, such as motor and speech regions, can be identified. This method is limited to older children because the young child often has inadequate cortical development to localize these areas definitively. One should note that in young children (under the age of 4 years), the absence of a response to standard cortical stimulation does not indicate nonfunctional cortex. Long-term intractable seizures and significant antiepileptic drug requirements may contribute to developmental and psychosocial deficiencies in the epileptic patient.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Use of Subdural Grids and Strip Electrodes to Identify a Seizure Focus in Children

For patients with intractable seizures, the best surgical outcome is achieved following precise localization of the seizure focus. Scalp EEG monitoring may be insufficient and chronic subdural invasive EEG monitoring has therefore been advocated. At Children's Hospital in Boston, 31 children had chronic subdural monitoring from January 1990 through June 1994. The average age at implantation was 11 years. Most patients (22) had placement of grid electrodes combined with strip electrodes to map temporal and/or frontal regions bilaterally. Twenty of the patients eventually had a resective procedure based on the findings. During monitoring, cortical stimulations were performed to localize speech and somatosensory areas. There was only one complication, a subdural hematoma in a patient who had had previous surgery. Chronic subdural EEG monitoring is helpful in precisely localizing seizure foci in pediatric patients; it also allows motor and speech mapping and appears to be a safe modality in children.

Communication between blind and severely visually impaired children and their parents

This study examines communications directed to young visually impaired children by their parents. Eight totally blind children and eight children whose vision was severely impaired were visited at home at around 18 months of age and video‐recordings were made of each child interacting with a familiar caretaker. It was found that the parents of blind children were more likely to initiate interactions themselves and tended to use verbal comments unaccompanied by actions more frequently. They were less likely to talk about objects which were at the child's current focus of attention and were more likely to describe the properties of objects to the child using general terms such as pronouns or general nouns. In addition, they tended to request verbal information from their children in contrast to the parents of severely visually impaired children, who were more likely to describe objects for them. Children in both groups received more requests for action than any other utterance type and all parents made infrequent mention of the attributes of objects. The differences between the groups are discussed in terms of the difficulties faced particularly by parents of blind children in initiating and sustaining interactions.

Joining Together in Literacy Learning: Teenage Mothers and Children

L iteracy learning is a process that has its roots in the home, beginning in infancy with the child's exposure to oral and written language (Goodman, 1986; Hiebert, 1988; Teale, 1986). Through numerous demonstrations and interactions with parents and caregivers, children begin to construct knowledge about and strategies for using print. Case studies attest to the profound role that extended parent-child interactions around print play in children's literacy development (Baghban, 1984; Clark, 1984; Lass, 1982). Such interactions seldom involve direct, formal instruction; rather, through jointly constructed experiences, children master a set of sustained patterns which serve as a basis for their subsequent acquisition of written language (Heath, 1983; Snow & Goldfield, 1982). In Vygotsky's (1978) notion of the zone of proximal development, children are seen as internalizing the processes practiced through participation with adults to advance their individual skills. For Vygotsky, the fundamental vehicle of social transaction provides children with opportunities to participate beyond their own abilities in a shared thinking process, appropriating what they contribute in these experiences for later use. Studies exploring the nature of parent-child interactions in literacy learning have focused, to a large extent, on storybook-reading activity in the home (Edwards & Panofsky, 1989; Ninio & Bruner, 1978; Snow & Goldfield, 1982; Yaden, Smolkin, & Conlon, 1989). Such studies describe how parents may assist children's learning by inventing routines that help to control children's focus of attention, match tasks to their abilities, and arrange the environment so that the children can solve problems that are a little bit beyond what they could do on their own. While storybook reading is posited as a central vehicle for literacy development, children and their parents also engage in a range of other activities which are literacy embedded. Print mediates many family activities, such as shopping for groceries or paying bills (Anderson & Stokes, 1984). Though such activities are not staged for children's benefit or adjusted to their level of expertise, parents tacitly guide their children's participation in these socially assembled (Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 1983), initiating them in the standing rules for behavior in a wide variety of social and print-related settings. Thus, a family's influence in children's literacy learning involves far more than the provision of books or leisure-time reading; it also involves the development through shared activities of ways to handle day-to-day print events which work concurrently to enhance children's learning about written language. This process of guiding children's participation (Rogoff, 1990) presumes intersubjectivity-a sharing of focus and a mutual understanding between people. And it is here that parents seem particularly well placed to play an important teaching role. Sharing the child's world, the parent can facilitate linking new situations to more familiar ones and drawing connections from the familiar to the novel-tasks viewed as essential for cog-